As DPS, it’s pretty easy to see from the damage meter (or interrupt meter) whether you’re contributing to the group. It’s less obvious for heals/tank. Now that I’m trying to push higher and higher keys, when we fail, I sometimes can’t figure out if it was preventable, or what I could have done differently. (Barring aside obvious mistakes like butt-pulling extra packs, missing assigned interrupt, etc…)
Some context: I do a lot of M+ keys between 14 and 18, mostly pugs. I play monk, and switch between mistweaver/brewmaster as-needed. I consider myself a competent player in both roles, but recognize there’s always room to improve.
When I was doing keys 12 and lower, I always felt like I could “carry” the group and we’d almost always make timer. Now, in higher keys, I find that it’s a lot more hit-or-miss. Like … I’ll do a key with 3 amazing DPS, and stuff dies so fast that I feel I’m not contributing much. They hit all the interrupts/stops, so I don’t have to blow healing CDs to save us. Some groups, on the other hand, it feels like no matter what I do there’s no way we will make timer because stuff dies too slowly. Then I run out of defensive CDs, healer goes OOM, etc… Or I try to kite to buy us time, which causes other issues, and it’s just a wipe-fest.
What I hope to get out of this question is an understanding of how I should keep improving to push higher and higher keys. Ie, if I suck and am just getting lucky sometimes because DPS is carrying me, I want to know so that I can practice more in lower keys and spend more time reviewing my gameplay recordings/logs.
Or if there truly wasn’t much I could do, I will just keep pushing and learning as I go, hopefully getting paired up with competent DPS.
Or maybe I’m just looking at this the wrong way. Curious what the rest of the community thinks.
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As a tank of many years, I think tank performance is probably the easiest to see. There’s no end to skill expression as a tank. From smoothing out damage or execution of a route and sometimes a big save. Knowing when you’re in trouble is massive.
That said, there’s no replacement for a good party. If damage is relatively low or heals can’t keep up, you’re boned. That’s not even considering other damage skill expressions like defensive use, interrupts, stunning/binding at the right times (not on pull hunters 
).
Considering the monk strength is smoothing damage, provided you aren’t dying quickly, you’re probably doing just fine.
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I like it when people use knockbacks on Sanguine week to move otherwise immovable mobs out of the pools.
I like it less when they knock the pack that I’ve dragged out just before the pool spawns back into it…
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If you’re healing, if you’re keeping the group up and supporting them with dps and utility like leg sweep, it’s hard to say that you’re being carried. There are only a few hps checks in keys right now (especially with urh being popped so often) so it’s really hard to not be able to keep up, especially with such a high hps healer like monk. The struggle you’re going to have is getting in enough damage but even that doesn’t mean much.
If you’re curious if you’re in a position to move up into higher keys, look at when and if you’re dying. If you’re doing a good job avoiding damage, knowing when to throw out your stun / rop, and can keep your group up, then keep trying to push up. I’ve had groups that i couldn’t keep alive in +10-12 and I’ve had groups in +18s that i dpsed the majority of the time and only healed 2.5k overall. It all depends on the group.
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A big part as a healer is looking at all your utility spells and thinking how you can use them to help the group. For example are you using paralysis to interrupt the hound master loyal beasts cast? In plaguefall are you legsweeping the plagueborer wretched phelgm cast to prevent the tank from getting chunked? To add to this ring of peace placement is very important and oftentimes I see it placed with no real care and it simply spreads the mobs all over the place making it harder to dps them down.
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As healer, overall HPS numbers seriously mean little - expect good tanks to be competitive with you on the charts.
What you are looking for: how smoothly has each fight gone? Are people worried that they’re dying? Are you dispelling properly and using CCs and utilities well?
As you move up on the healing skill ladder - are you contributing to damage while keeping everyone up? Good healers can keep a team alive. Bigger healers looking to push higher keys contribute greatly to DPS. Big healer CDs can also double up as a DPS CD in that your increased healing thoroughput frees you to do damage.
ABC, always be casting, is the name of the game - always be throwing out something whether it’s heals or damage. Every contribution matters.
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If the dps in the group can pump 17-20k dps then you know you are pulling correctly as a tank.
If you feel like you are never in danger, it means you should be pulling more. However, if you die then you probably pulled too much. It is very much a balancing act.
If your healer can dps 3-5k it means you are using defensives correctly and the group is avoiding damage.
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Tanking is funny like that. It gets easier and easier the better the other players in your group are. You go from fighting the mobs AND dealing with everyone’s mistakes to fighting mobs with the help of everyone. An 18 can feel like a 3 when the dps are competent.
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As a healer you basically just know when people are taking damage because the content is designed for them to take it, and when they’re taking damage because they aren’t running mechanics well. You can also gauge how good a group is based on how much you’re able to DPS as a healer. If most of the pulls I’m able to just tee off and pad DPS meters I’m probably running with a group of people who aren’t standing in junk, are using personals, have a tank doing a really great job of facing adds correctly, and doing intelligent pulls, etc.
You can also check stuff like interrupts, CDs used, etc. on details to tell whether you’ve got a helpful group of people, or if you have a group of people who are basically relying on you to out heal mechanics while they faceroll and fumble around.
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As a healer, you know you are being carried when the group cannot depend on you to help them survive unavoidable damage. You constantly need your tank throw off heals to help out during times when it’s really your time to shine. You are being out healed by the tank on heal check fights like post master, and executor tarvold.
As a healer, you are being carried when you offer nothing other than healing to the group and when no one takes damage you just sit there and do nothing. Take Ingra Maloch in Mists of Tirna Scithe. If you are just sitting around dealing no damage in p2, you are simply being carried.
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